Along with my four favorites, discussed in a previous post, there are numerous companies worthy of mention. I say this based almost exclusively on their stage demonstrations. Conferenza usually spends a good deal f time listening to and pondering attendee comments We will still do that in our newsletter which will come out several weeks from now. If you want a copy of that just email me. In any case using a very subjective first-person voice, here are the companies I found that seemed promising:
- MyPeople of Birmingham, Ala. is a nationwide home phone service that uses interactive voice processing and VOIP for services. The nicest component is the ability to use VOIP for international calls directly from a residential line, cutting costs from about $1.40 a min to four cents. You use voice to make calls, rather than dialing. The service lets you call in for weather reports and there's even a wake up service with a snooze option. Much of this may sound old hat, but this implementation s for residential users and it's $25 a month flat for all of these services..
- ZinkKat LLC introduced Chili, a cordless device for teenagers accessing Internet content like podcasts, RSS feeds, ski reports, voice-activated Craig's list and Internet radio from anywhere in the house. It is an extremely simple to use device with only two buttons on it. While we think it is a good example of moves toward making the user's life simpler, ZinkKat seems to be competing with all sorts of entrenched devices, that have massive dollars and established name brands behind them. We haven't had a chance to ask them about pricing r market plans yet.
- Transparansee Systems, Inc. of New York City introduced its BestMatch Search Engine which is yet another example of how the search for better search is evolving. Transparansee is addressing the problems we've all experienced with structured data. When users are asked to define preferences, the database traditionally has lacked the common sense to recommend, near misses. The company showed how BestMatch shows contextual options on a house hunters search. A request for 5-bedroom home for $500,000--$600,000 in a nice zip code neighborhood, can be adjust t show some good four bedroom options, or options in the next neighborhood over, etc. Users can use a slider to make bedrooms more important than price, r the reverse. In fact, the company maintains, --searches structured data such as a real estate listing. Gives you options that are close, but don't match. such as one more bedroom at same price. Stops you from getting too many results, goes for lowest price and highest value. You can move sliders to change what's most important between price and bedroom.
- AOL acquired a Silicon Valley startup named Truveo a while ago,and the child f that marriage AOL Video Search was launched today. It is a video search engine that the company claims makes it easy to find and extract the clips you want from the 20 billion video streams available today on the Internet. AOL describes this as a new video platform that will at some unspecified point in the future allow you to watch any and all web-based video on your TV.
- Zimini of Elmhurst, IL is the newest of a long line of companies over many years claiming to provide end users with promotional offers that they really, really want. Their Demo backed it up to some degree. In an era of web-based services, Zimini offers a free software download in which customers are supposed to enter their interests, then start receiving coupons and promotional offers that are relevant to them. Zimini keeps offers current. Merchants can use it as a promotion server and have the tools to track results. We are usually skeptical of anything that takes a presence in our computers and gets to scrape personal demographic data from individuals. Whether Zimini is the exception or not remains to be seen.
- Sprout Systems of El Cajon, CA introduced SproutIt MailRoom, which sorts and organizes small business email. Gives template answers to standard inquiries to save time. This s old news for global enterprise denizens, but Sprout is dedicated to businesses of 10 or less people. Small business is oft overlooked in technology, in part because they are late adopters, and in part because they are a horizontal and difficult t sell to.
- iotum, of Ottawa, yet another company I consulted briefly, introduced a system for managing when calls get into your life and stay out of it, automating and simplifying the job of a hum executive assistant. In the course of a day, the context of who is and is not a top priority caller changes, and iotum, the company says, is smart enough to know when the wife's call needs to get in and when it should not. It also seems to vastly simplify the annoyance and confusion that pervade many conference calls.
- Vivid Sky LLC of St. Louis, MO introduced SkyBox, an apparent must for people who attend live sports events. It does lots of neat things likes gives you a map to your seat and let's you order your beverage and hot dog from the concessionaire who then delivers to your seat. But what puts it over the wall is that you have a personalized chance for an instant replay of that great catch, pass, fumble or dunk you missed while looking in the wrong direction. Skybox can access any TV camera in the stadium to let you see the shot
- NewsGator introduced Hosted Solution--for publishers such as newspapers to RSS enable content and serve it to users. This is an indication of what co-founder and CTO Greg Reinacker has been talking about--taking NewsGator into the corporation where a server strategy can be much more lucrative than a consumer strategy. Of greater relevance to those of us on the front end is that the incredible potential of RSS may start moving more rapidly beyond bloggers as more and more static Internet content starts getting directly fed to those who want it..
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